Also these dorks are so in-dorktrinated that they think all white men are in fearful baffled awe of rap music. They come in the locker room thinking no white man there has ever heard a black man utter these rhythmic words.
But instead thats not the case.
vocaroo.com/i/s0gahA7s5F3Q
I can endlessly share stories about anti white racism here in this country, but I will get in trouble for it.
this is a step in the right direction, though. you can’t imagine the burden that has been lifted from the working class tax payer to sustain the welfare state by turning irresponsible misogynistic wanna-be gangstas who ‘don’t lud (love) them hos’ and leave single unemployable black women with four kids to support, into manageable and domesticated dipshits who are proud to have a job and be exploited by the capitalists who are responsible for marketing the shit that made them such trash to begin with.
first you gotta take the negro out of em. next you gotta turn them into passive, backward working class white people. then you can start working on em.
that’s because he didn’t have the whole gangsta ensemble going. i’ll compile a short list for things he’ll need to do to impress all the guys in the locker room. please give it to him:
-
get a tattoo of some fearsome animal and/or a weapon and/or some religious symbol. i always go with a dragon, tech-9 and a yin-yang. if you get a good artist he’ll intertwine all three so you get the dragon holding the tech-9 inside of a yin yang.
-
lift weights and get all cut up. that way you’ll be ready for the fight you’ll never actually get in.
-
buy an over-sized watch with all kinds of depth gauges and shit that you’ll never use. having one of these is essential to looking like one of those special ops assassins you see in the action movies. also jewelry. a large gold necklace that it took you five months to save up for at your $11.50 an hr. job, can’t be emphasized enough. nobody knows how much you make or how long it took you to save up to buy the crap; just seeing it automatically means ‘this guy has wealth’.
-
work on the lingo. tough guy speech is critically important, and you can’t sound too intelligent. a real man is laconic and ‘of few words’. this one’s easy to do because you don’t have to make much effort in appearing unintelligent. you’re already equipped with this super-power.
-
either get a hot girlfriend, or download some pics of hot girls you can pretend is your girlfriend and show to the other fellas. be sure to provide detailed report of how you ‘tore that shit up’.
-
come up with a way to take some minor struggle you’ve had to endure in your life and turn the story into something magnificent and shakespearean. this will earn the respect of the other fellas, and they won’t be able to check the accuracy of the story to find out your lying.
-
ALWAYS claim to be a man of ‘god’. duddin’t matter which one… any will do. this will work with your ‘struggle’ story to further enhance your upstanding nature; now you’re a guy who has the strength to keep your faith even during the hardest of trials and tribulations.
these tips will provide a basic foundation for completing the facade of being someone unique and worthy of respect.
fuck i forgot one of the most important ones:
- learn to be able to sustain a technical conversation about mixed martial arts and/or the UFC. even though you really don’t know how any of that shit works, none of the others do either, so a collective bluff can ensure without disruption, and everyone will be impressed.
neither one of you have a clue as to what I was talking about…
what you two (barbarian and 75) are talking about is style
and style is just like fame and fortune and power, transitory/temporary/impermanent
Your “rules” are useful for about 5 minutes and then styles change
and your “rules” are useless… rap is just another style in music
and styles change… for I have lived through disco and that was just
another style…
(as a baby boomer, I still feel the need to apologize
for disco, sorry human race… our bad)
your “theories” about whites and blacks is just nonsense badly written…
or said differently, full of sound and fury……… signifying nothing…….
you two have taken the transient and temporary and made it into
something worthwhile… it isn’t…
in ten years, I hope you recall these posts and feel ashamed…
for I too had such strong feelings about some things in my youth
and was later embarrassed for even thinking about such nonsense…
barbarianhorde: well that’s right there why you will always lose…
thinking music isn’t part of the solution…
these comments in particular need some understanding… life isn’t
about winning or losing… for in the end, we all die, there is no winning there…
we are transitory creatures, living transitory lives, where everything
we do and believe and hope for is transitory…the best we can hope
for is to rise above being just animals, like you two, for your beliefs are
merely base instincts at work…well, I guess in your defense I could
say that you are still young and leave it at that………
rarely do the lies we tell ourselves while young last into old age…
Kropotkin
occasionally, newspapers or magazines will offer up pictures
of aging stars like Sean Connery and we see this one time movie
star and heartthrob, is old… the looks are gone and quite often,
the mind is gone too, what we see is a shell of a human being…
and to think that this person was at one time, at the pinnacle of
human society… rich, famous, beloved, sought after…
and we see one of the Buddha’s suffering here in old age…
what we are and what we do and what we have accomplished
are all temporary, transitory…dust in the wind… to recall
a song…now many will throw their hands up and take to
temporary fixes to forget our transitory nature, temporary
fixes like booze and drugs and sex but these too are transitory
and led us nowhere…once the highs fade and reality
sets in, we are still left with the puzzling problem of our
transitory lives…
if we reject, as we must, any metaphysical answers to our
transitory lives, metaphysical answers like reincarnation
and heaven and hell and god and the eternal soul, we are left with,
what exactly?
we are left with this moment, the here and now…
and that is the only value in our lives, not the past or future,
because they either never existed or are transient in nature…
so each moment of existence is what we have and that is all
we have…
and yet we insist on wasting our moments on such useless matters
as work and hate and violence and despair and greed…
we have but one moment and isn’t that one single moment best
spent on positive values like love and tolerence and peace
and justice… for love begats love and peace begats peace
and tolerence begats tolerence and justice begats justice…
so how shall we spend our single individual moments is really
the only question in life… spend them wisely…….
Kropotkin
Why do I always feel like I’m at an alcoholic’s anonymous meeting waiting in line with a small styrofoam cup to get a cup of coffee from a coffee pot that hasn’t been washed in three weeks, when I read your posts, pete?
Like we’ve already made our introductions.
‘Hi my name’s joe and I’m an alcoholic’
‘Hi joe. Thanks for coming’
… and now I’ve left my folding plastic chair and am standing in the coffee line with six or seven chain smokers.
K: I wouldn’t know why you feel as you do… I have never been to an AA meeting…
Kropotkin
the Buddhist quest to negate suffering is doomed because
we cannot end suffering… we’re born, we grow old,
we do have diseases and we die…simple statements of facts
which cannot be denied or changed………
we suffer… and there is not a dam thing we can do about it…
so we can either accept that or we can live in denial…
as denial isn’t really a life choice, we must somehow come to terms
with suffering… but I believe that places suffering as a key
part of life and I don’t think of suffering as a key part of life…
as we grow old and suffer, we learn to adapt, we learn to live
with suffering… I have suffered my entire life from my hearing loss,
and yet I adapt as I must and simply make it a part of my life,
my hearing loss doesn’t define who I am… it is simply a part of me…
just as suffering is a part of my life, but it doesn’t define who I am…
yes, I was born and I will grow old and I have suffered from diseases
and yes, I will die… but the so fuck what? Every single living being
ever, has suffered, it is simply part of the gig of being alive…
be alive, suffer…
so why make a natural and unavoidable part of life, the significant
part of life… why not make the here and now, the significant part of life…
we don’t need to begin with suffering as our base cause from which our
life acts or reacts from… we can make our begining point a different
point then suffering… we can begin with doubt, not wonder as
the Greeks believed in…
yes, we suffer but to devolop an entire way of life to avoid suffering
is foolish… suffering doesn’t take up that much of my life to make
it the focal point of my philosophy… doubt, doubt does make a
focal point of my life and thus I can begin my philosophy with doubt,
not suffering, not wonder, but doubt…
the goal is to make everything a part of life… sex is a part of life,
doubt is a part of life, suffering is a part of life, drugs are a part of life,
simply accept things as a part of life, not the whole life, but
as a part of life……….
in other words, we can choose moderation in all things…
and accept everything that comes along as simply a part of
life… for in fact, everything is a part of life…….
we are life and life is us and everything we see and hear
and touch and taste and feel is a part of us and we are a part of all
that matter and energy, for we too are just matter and energy
and we too are time and space……. for everything in the universe
is part of us and we are a part of it………
no need to make something like suffering as a key focal point in our life
as there is no need to make sex or drugs or god or anything else the
focal point of our life…………….
we are everything and everything is us……
Kropotkin
let us work with an example…
let us say, for argument sake, that my wife died…
(and I really, really, really hope not)
but let us say she dies…
I would be suffering, no doubt about it,
I have been with my wife for 27 years and married
for 23 years… I would be in a great deal of pain
and naturally so… but that suffering, that pain
isn’t what defines me or will it define my relationship
with my wife… wifes die and husbands die and children die
and parents die and those wifes and husbands and children
and parents suffer and grow old have diseases…
it is the way of life… I can rail against what is or
I can deny or I can simply accept the fact that birth,
disease, old age and death are the price of life…
but with my wife I can hold onto all the wonderful moments
we had and the quiet moments in which we express our love
without saying a word and the occasional fight…
it is all part of this matter we call life… and suffering
and old age and disease and death is a part of life…
I can do no other then to accept the fact… because
I can’t change birth or disease or old age or death,
anymore then I can stop the sun from moving or the stars
from revolving…….
I can simply accept these matter as matters I cannot control
and work with the matters I can control…
I can control this moment, the here and now… I have the day off,
I can watch TV or I can read or I can write here on ILP or I can eat
lunch… this moment… this here and now, I can control…
and I can see this moment for what it is, a moment in which
I can learn something… I can see this moment as a beautiful moment,
no different then sitting on the beach and watching the sun set
or high in the mountains looking down on some meadow……
we create the context of each moment and it can be beautiful or
evil or wrong or boring…….
all you have to do to see each moment is to distance yourself
from your life and take each moment separately… escape from
the flow of life and understand those moments apart from the natural
flow of our lives…….
we see life as one constant flow from birth to death but life is
really a series of moments that connect us from birth to death…
each moment is a separate moment and in our minds we connect
those moments together to create a story about our lives,
life is a series of still photo’s in which we turn into a movie
in our heads…stop the flow of the movie in your head and
separate out one moment and be with that moment, right now……
I will take a moment with my wife… we are sitting on the couch
and she is watching some real housewives of someplace show and
I am reading… we don’t say anything to each other, but I look up
and she is looking at me and we smile at each other, I say hi and she
says hi…… and we have that moment of love and it is enough…
we have no need for grand dramatic emotionalism or big
pronouncements of love for each other… hi was enough…….
and yes, yes I may suffer in the past and in the future, but it
doesn’t matter because I got a hi from my wife……
and that is of more value then any suffering I might get
before or after……….and it is a moment I can hold onto for the
rest of my life… that moment can be the focal point of my life,
not any suffering or any grand wonderous moment that may come
in the future……… sometimes hi is enough to carry us over a lifetime…
regardless of any possible suffering of birth, disease, old age and death…
a simple hi…
Kropotkin
This sounds interesting.
When taken to the max, what benefites are there for this idea?
when taken to max, he’d probably ask something like ‘where did you get this stuff… out of a fortune cookie?’
oh you mean taken to the maximum, like the limit. okay i thought you meant stirner, max.
Or at least Count St. Germain
the Count of St. Germain,
One of the most enigmatic and controversial personalities of the eighteenth century. His birth date and the date of his death, as well as his true name cannot be established with any certainty. According to a lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchatel on 27th September 1911 (translated in Anthroposophical Quarterly, winter, 1960), the name does not only refer to one personality, but to others too. In the true bearer of this name lives the individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz. See also lecture 5 given on 4th November 1904, which is included in this volume and the notes thereto.
my Atlantis lectures …
This refers to lectures given in January 1904, of which, however, there are no notes.
To find our bearings,
The notes of Vegelahn express this in the following way: ‘To find our bearings, we must get a little insight into two currents of the present day which are hidden in the souls of men of the fifth Root Race and are often in conflict with one another. The one current is best represented in the Indian and South European confessions and also in the outlook on life of the Jewish peoples and the Babylonians — and the other is contained in the confessions and outlook of the Persians, westward of Persia to the regions of the Teutons.’
Of these two currents …outlook on life of the peoples of the Southern Zone … basic tendency of the Northern peoples.
See: The East in the Light of the West, fifth lecture, Munich, 27th August 1909.
Devas.
The Indian name for the gods of Devachan, the heavenly world.
Asuras,
Indian — Suras = gods (from Asu = breath) became non-gods = A-suras. In the old Oriental religions and also later by Rudolf Steiner used as the name for satanic beings. In connection with this lecture, however, it is used in the sense of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, (‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects’) p.500. ‘Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil spirits and lower gods, who are eternally at war with the great deities — are the gods of the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the Rig Veda, they are the spiritual and the divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians. There was a time when the gods Indra, Angi, and Varuna themselves belonged to the Asuras.’ Only in Atlantean times, at the transition from Lemuria to Atlantis, were these originally high gods transformed into non-gods.
In the notes of a hitherto unpublished lecture by Rudolf Steiner, given in Berlin, 17th October 1904, the following is said: ‘If we wish to understand the point of view of spiritual evolution we must be clear about an important event of the Atlantean epoch. Those beings which had originally been spiritual, now appeared as revolutionaries striving for independence. Suras now became Asuras. Until this time they had taken no part in evolution. They are those powers which, just as in our day, represent the intellectual and spiritual side of human nature. This side of Lucifer’s nature is that which also stood for Christianity during the first centuries. There are two documents referring to that, one is in the Vatican and a copy of it is in the possession of the most thoroughly initiated Christian of the western world: The Count of St. Germain.’
We learn particulars about it …
It is to be noted that the text of the paragraph beginning with these words is defective. See in this respect Blavatsky’s TheSecret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The History of the Fourth Race,’ also lecture by Dr. Steiner, Dornach, 18th January 1920 (not yet translated) [Yes it is!], in which the date of the cessation of physical incarnation is given as 6th. Millenium, A.D.
‘The Sons of God saw the daughters of men’ …
Genesis 6, 1–2. See also Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, Part 2, ‘On the Myth of the Fallen Angel, in its various aspects.’ In the story of Noah from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine it says of this event: ‘… this time men began to multiply on the earth, and the children of God, that is to say, of Seth … saw the daughters of men, that is to say, of Cain, and were overcome by concupiscence and took them to their wives.’
the saga of Prometheus.
This is also linked by Rudolf Steiner to Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2.
‘In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children.’
Genesis 3:16.
‘dying and becoming’ … ‘gloomy guest’
‘Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und werde!
Bist du nur ein triiber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.
Concluding verse of a poem by Goethe calledSelige Sehnsucht (‘Holy Longing’).
‘And there are three that bear witness in earth,’
First Epistle of John, v. 7. Rudolf Steiner had already explained this passage from the Epistle in detail in his lecture on 29th April 1904. According to that, the present-day materialistic concepts of blood and water must not be applied here. When it is said: ‘There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’
This means in theosophical terminology: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, the three higher principles. And when it is said later on: ‘And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,’ it means the three lower principles, the three soul attributes. The astral body, as well as the blood, (not our physical blood), are the lowest parts of the soul. Jewish esotericism believes that movement of the blood is caused by the astral body and that is correct. All influences which do not directly pass through the soul, but still have an effect on the body are called the ‘blood’ in Jewish esoteric teaching. It is the active principle, the motivator. We call only the red liquid which flows through the body ‘blood.’ By water is signified ‘Kama’ in every occult language — feelings, emotions, passions, etc: ‘And now I shall tell you why this is called water. You must get acquainted with the concept that humanity today has grown accustomed to visualising everything in a much more materialistic way than he did formerly. If you picture to yourself an old cabbalist, he did not regard water as just a flowing element, but as an image and he arrived at that in the following way. He said to himself; the water is inhabited by those animals which we reckon as the most primitive. Animals evolved originally out of the liquid element: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then came out of the water onto the land. It was only out of water that emotions and feelings came about … We distinguish the lower part of the soul, which stirs the blood and makes it pulsate and causes pleasure and dislike and all such other painful experiences. And that he calls water because from water is derived that element of soul. And then we have the thinking part of the soul which is Spirit.’
hidden manuscripts …
See note 6.
the great masters … the founders of our spiritual movement — not our society.’ …
Rudolf Steiner expressed himself in a similar way on the 2nd January 1905, in a letter to a Member who was about to be accepted into the Esoteric School: ‘You know that behind the whole theosophical movement there are highly evolved beings whom we call “Masters” or “Mahatmas”. These sublime beings have already completed the path which the rest of humanity still has to tread. They are now active as the great “Teachers of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Human Perception”. They are already engaged in work on higher planes to which the rest of mankind will evolve during the course of the next periods of development (so-called “Rounds”). They do their work on the physical plane through their “messengers”, the first of whom was H.P. Blavatsky — I mean the first as regards the theosophical movement. The Masters never found an outer Organisation of society, nor would they administer one. The Theosophical Society was formed by its founder Members. (H.P. Blavatsky, Olcott and others) in order to promote the work of the Masters on the physical plane, but these Masters themselves have never exerted any influence on the Society as such. It is in its whole character and leadership purely and simply the work of men living on the earth.’ See in this context also lecture 16, given on 22nd October 1905 (contained in this volume).
Lecture 2, Berlin, 10th June 1904
Source for the text.
Shorthand notes by Franz Seiler and Walter Vegelahn and short notes in longhand by Marie Steiner von Sivers.
I mentioned already …
At the end of his lecture given on 27th May 1904 with the words: ‘Next time I shall deal with one of the most important legends, which is one you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is so profound that there is hardly anything to match it: the legend of Cain and Abel.’
an allegory for very profound mysteries
See in this connection: Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, ‘The Divine Hermaphrodite.’ p.124, but also Rudolf Steiner’s later cycle:The Effects of Occult Development Upon the Sheaths of Man, ten lectures given in the Hague, 20th–29th March 1913 (London and New York, 1945).
Enoch,
Apocryphal Book of the Old Testament.
Take the first sentence from the fifth chapter of Genesis:
This is a free rendering by Rudolf Steiner of the words of the Old Testament. Instead of ‘male and female created he them,’ Rudolf Steiner substituted: ‘male-female created he him,’ with subsequent corrections of ‘them,’ ‘their,’ etc., into ‘him,’ ‘his,’ etc. On later occasions, Rudolf Steiner often stressed the fact that this first creation of man was a male-female creation. Compare also:Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, eighth lecture and Genesis, Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, eleventh lecture.
Abel is the same as ‘pneuma’ in Greek,
See in this connection Rudolf Steiner’s The Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 5.
The brain became male,
This passage appears to have been imperfectly preserved. One can compare it with passages from lectures 17, 18, 19 and 20, given on 23rd October 1905, and 2nd January 1906, in the present volume.
It was a sin when ‘The Sons of God’ …
See note 15 of the previous lecture.
From this union resulted a race of men…
Genesis 6, 4. ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the Sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.’
It is called ‘Rakshasas’ in occult language …
According to H.P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, there are many explanations for this race of the Rakshasas in Oriental esoteric philosophy. See, for instance: The Secret Doctrine, Book 2, p. 288, where it speaks of ‘Rakshasas’ (giant demons) and Daityas (Titans).
A German translation of C.G. Harrison’s The Transcendental Universe, which was among the books in Rudolf Steiner’s library, may have been used by him in preparing this lecture. In the fifth lecture of the above it speaks of: ‘These semi-human creatures, the progeny of the fallen angels, are known in the Hindu Scriptures as the “Asuras” and are sometimes called “Rakshasas” or demons.’ This makes it plain that, in lecture 2 held on 10th June 1904, Rudolf Steiner conferred a different meaning on the term ‘Asuras’ to the one he had in mind when he lectured on 23rd May 1904 (lecture 1).
It is not for nothing that the Bible expresses it thus:
An account of Christ’s entry into Hell can be read in the Apocryphal Book of ‘The Acts of Pilate.’
The Rakshasa beings were brought thereby into a state of paralysis and lethargy.
This passage appears in the notes of Marie Steiner von Sivers in the following form: ‘The Rakshasas were brought into a state of paralysis because they were being opposed from two sides: by the old Chela, who was deeply connected with the physical plane and by a purely spiritual being, the Christ. Their power was thus paralysed from two sides. Something cosmic was effected. This tension, this bottled-up energy, had to be prevented from becoming effective energy. That is the Christ principle in action against the Antichrist.’
C.G. Harrison has the following to say on this subject in the aforementioned book: ‘The Asuras are igneous, or dynamic, in their nature, and their power for evil was terrific. It was destroyed for ever by the advent of Jesus Christ, and they are now, as St. Jude puts it, “reserved in everlasting chains until the judgment of the great day.” (St. Jude evidently derived his knowledge of the subject from the “Book of Enoch”.) Stated in scientific terms, they are held in check, unable to move backwards or forwards, between the earth and the Eighth Sphere at the point of latency, where the attraction of both is equal on all planes, until the “great day” or axidal coincidence, when they will be drawn irresistibly into the vortex of the latter. This text in St. Jude has been unfortunately misunderstood, and supposed to apply to Lucifer and the first fall of the angels; hence the Miltonic and medieval myths.’
Nostradamus,
Actually Michel de Notre Dame (1503–1566). French astronomer and medical doctor. Famous on account of his Prophesies, written in French verse.
Marie-Antoinette
1755–1793: daughter of the Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa; became Queen of France in 1774 and ended her life on the scaffold, not heeding the warning of the Count of St. Germain.
You know that Jesus Christ remained on the earth for ten years after his death.
Rudolf Steiner assumed that his audience was familiar with the work of the English theosophist, G.R.S. Mead Pistis Sophia, A Gnostic Gospel, London, 1896, which begins with the words: ‘It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years speaking with his disciples …’
Pistis Sophia
The title of a work assumed to be the same as The Apocalypse of Sophia, composed by Velentius, the most learned doctor of the Gnosis who lived for thirty years in Egypt in the latter half of the second century.
The only MS of thePistis Sophia known to exist is the Askew manuscript, bought by the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Askew at the end of the eighteenth century.
Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism.
Published in 1883. See also, The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and its Relation to Modern Culture.
‘Nifelheim’ or ‘Ymir the Giant’
Refer to notes for lecture 3 given on 30th September 1904, (included in this volume) and also the first and thirty-first lectures inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.
because it was the intention to involve man thoroughly in Kama-Manas
See twenty-third lecture inFoundations of Esotericism, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.
Lecture 3, Berlin, 30th September 1904
Voltaire, the 18th Century philosopher, described Saint-Germain as “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.” … The only thing that accounts for his death though is a local record that states Count de Saint-Germain deceased, February 27, 1784.
The Count is NOT fiction, he was a true historical figure. … Saint-Germain may have been the son of Hungarian Prince Ferenc Rakoczi, …
K: all you have to do to see each moment is to distance yourself
from your life and take each moment separately… escape from
the flow of life and understand those moments apart from the natural
flow of our lives…
Dan: This sounds interesting.
When taken to the max, what benefites are there for this idea?
K: think of life, your life as a movie…it flows and continues
along regardless of what happens in your life…the movie
still continues… and we see ourselves as being in a movie,
with the continuity of a movie… days pass into days and months
flow into months and the seasons pass into seasons and years
pass into years…our lives have a flow to it that goes from day
to month to years to decades… looking back on my life…
the years have flown from one to another to another…
I can pick out individual days and moments and events, but
for the most part, every day has quietly flown from one day
to the next without any interruption or break in it…
and we call that life…
let us take one moment, the movie of life is flowing right now…
let us take a moment and turn that movie into a still shot…
when we act in our movie, it it usually without any thought
or understanding of why we are acting that way…….
we just react, instinctively… someone moves toward us and we
react in some fashion… no thought involved, just reaction, instincts,
and when their is a fast moving situation where our lives might be threaten,
this is a good thing, sometimes we need instincts to take over and protect
us… but how often is that? I would suggest we react instinctively far too often,
instead of pausing, thinking about it situation as it occurs………
every single situation is a reflective moment waiting to happen if
we resist the temptation to react instinctively to every situation…
take every moment out of time, take every situation out of time and pause,
think about it, reflect upon that moment… what value can I use in this
situation?
I will give you a situation in which I handled rather badly just yesterday…
my wife and I went to Costco yesterday, I was involved in my own thinking
about what we were going to get, I wasn’t thinking about the situation,
I was just in my own head thinking… I went to get a cart, the cart I found
actually was two carts connected together, so I pushed the carts and then held
the one cart which dislodged the second cart, because I was in my own head
and not being aware of the situation, I saw a women with a child reaching for the second cart,
the one not in my hand… I simply let go of the first cart and grabbed the second cart,
basically out of this woman’s hand and I simply started to walk toward the front of Costco…
my wife was aghast, I heard about my “rudeness” to this poor women all the
way through Costco and all the way home……. being put on the defensive, I
attempted to justify my “rudeness” but there was no defense for this action of mine…
if I had stopped and thought about it, even for a second, I would have given up
that cart, which had no significance for me, to the woman………and I would have
taken the second cart or even the third because this cart was in front of
hundreds of carts… I was involved in my movie so much, I didn’t take the time
to isolate the moment and think about what I was doing…….
I could have just given up the cart, it wasn’t that big of a deal, it wouldn’t have
cost me anything, anything at all to give up the cart except maybe 2 seconds…
I was rude to another human being for not wanting to wait 2 seconds…
really, Kropotkin… what happened was nothing, it doesn’t matter in the overall scheme
of things… the women probably didn’t even remember it 1 minute after it happened…
but that is not the point… that “rudeness” really is the overall scheme of things,
this movie we play in our head is really just individual seconds, individual moments
that we turn into a movie in our heads…all of life is just individual moments,
individual seconds…life is just a series of snap shots which we turn into a movie
like when you take a series of pictures and then by flipping them, you turn it
into a movie……….
we need to focus on those individual snap shots, the individual moments which
is really our life, not the movie, but the individual moments and then we
need to become aware of every single moment, become aware of every single
snap shot……….we need to slow it down and become aware of the moments
of our lives………
if you think of your life, what is it you really do? we spend our days in
mindless travel to and from places and we spend hours waiting in various
lines and we spend time waiting for meals and TV shows and movies to start
and we spend a whole lot of time being bored……. most of your life is spent
in pointless actions…….
the idea of the Kantian question, “What am I to do?” is really about
giving meaning and purpose to our actions… most of our lives is
dull and boring crap… to ask oneself, “What am I to do?” is to
try to give your life some meaning and some purpose… it is to take
individual moments and create value within that moment…by
that moment, the most important moment in your life…
but Kropotkin, we humans, we have millions of moment, how can we
take one moment and give it the special notice you claim each moment
deserves? By thinking about each moment as being special, each moment deserves
our awareness and this is what I am talking about…… becoming aware of
every single moment as an individual moment……
isolate every single moment and make it the only moment in time,
no past… no future… just this moment, this second can exist for you…
no other minute or moment exists for you… right here, right now is
all we have and all we will ever have…….
isolate every single moment and make it your own…
become aware of every single moment and not the movie,
where we are past, present and future…
just that moment…the right here and the right now…
become aware of every single moment…
Kropotkin
ahaha how ingenious.
K: I have read this three times and I must admit, I have no idea what you
are talking about or its relevance to anything, anything at all………
I am sure the fault is mine, but I just can’t made any sense of this…
Kropotkin
as we look at the modern world…
we see an addiction… we have addictions to
money/wealth, we have addictions to drugs and booze
and sex and we have addictions to the material world…
books… my addiction…and to cars and to TV’s and couches
and houses…and an addiction to experiences……
the trick is to escape our addictions, because a addiction,
any addiction leads to suffering… trying to get the high from
that addiction is the root cause of suffering… the desire to get things
is suffering… that is why the Buddha and others like him, try to
point out that desire is the cause of suffering… but suffering
has other parts to it, birth, disease, old age and death…
and their is nothing we can do about those… we cannot stop
disease or old age or death and we certainly didn’t ask to be born…
the Buddha believes that by no longer being reincarnated ends suffering
but that assumes that life itself isn’t good and life is good… if
we understand certain things about it…… it is possible to think
life is good when watching the sun set on the beach or viewing
a meadow from a mountain top…… beauty itself can be rewarding…
both viewing it and creating it… but it isn’t hard to become addicted
to the desire of beauty… and the problem lies in not forming desires
but even desire can be good… I desire wisdom and I have spent my
life in search of wisdom…I have sacrificed a lot in my search for
wisdom…….can the search for, the desire for wisdom be bad?
desire isn’t a bad thing as long as it doesn’t turn into an addiction…
it really comes down to everything in moderation… do you control
your desires or do they control you? If I am willing to hurt another person to
gain my desire, then the desire controls me…
here we can use values to judge our behavior…….
instead of desire as a means to gain things, we use values…
when deciding upon a course of action, I use values to
base my actions upon… I don’t desire something but I
use a value like justice to base my actions upon…….
so I engage with the concept of justice which is equality, to
find what my actions ought to be…
“What should I do”? and we use justice as one criteria to engage
with that question……
but we must first become aware of our actions and the reasons behind
why we act as we act………and it all begins with awareness of our actions…
or as Socrates said, “Know thyself”…… there isn’t a whole lot of
difference between the understanding of people in western philosophy
and eastern philosophy… quite often the only difference is the terminology
each side uses…
do you want to be free? begin by becoming aware of your addictions,
your desires for something…then tread the path of moderation…
a goal is good to have, even trying to become the Buddha is a goal,
but understand why the goal you have chosen is the goal for you…
awareness is the focal point of everything you ought to be doing…….
Kropotkin
Note that I almost never ask “what is reality?” and for the
simple reason that I don’t think the nature of reality really
matters… we exist and matter and energy and time and space
exists… that is reality…… we can work with idea’s like
matter/energy and time/space because they are the reality
that is……… everything in the universe is matter/energy…
time/space…when I doubt, use the simplest explanation to
understand something…reality is and the only thing
we need to do is to react to that understanding of matter/energy
and time/space…
Kropotkin
I can hear someone objecting to what I am saying because
they might think,
“Your thoughts have nothing to do with me or my life.
I am in control of my life”
and I question anyone who believes that they have “control” over
their lives……. for control is the one thing that human beings
don’t have over their life… we live in a connected, global world
where actions in one part of the world affect other parts of the world
and by doing so, affect us in ways we cannot even understand……
so how would we gain control over our lives?
and the interesting question lies in this, do we really need
to control our lives? it is thought that human beings by desiring
things, suffer from that desire because desiring, whatever it is we
desire and we can’t get, causes suffering…… but the fact is we desire
things all the time and because we are not in control, we quite often
don’t get what we desire… I have wanted a Porsche 911 for years,
but I will never be able to afford it… I desire and my desire won’t
be fulfilled, but do I suffer from that? No, I understand reality…
that kind of desire can be of the “it be nice if it happened but”
and we humans live with this sort of desire all the time…and by
understanding our desire, we can control it… or perhaps,
my desire is to date a supermodel… well that ain’t going to happen,
I desire and I know it isn’t going to happen…so am I suffering from this
desire? no, I haven’t lost a second of sleep over this desire,
“it would be nice if it happened but”…………we can control our lives
by having honest expectations of the things we desire… when I was young,
I wanted to be a baseball player and I played baseball for years…
I desired but came to realize I wasn’t good enough… I came to an
honest understanding of reality… and to this day, 40 years later, I wish
I had been good enough, but “it would have been nice but”
we can avoid suffering from our desires if we are honest about
reality and the possibility of achieving those desires……
I would like to be rich, but that option is pretty much off the table,
I don’t suffer because I am honest about the possibility of being rich…
and in that honesty about reality, we have control over our lives…
if we are aware of and honest about our chance of achieving our desires,
then we can be in control, at least about that part of our lives.
but what is required in this honesty is the willingness to accept
the truth about who we are and what is possible…….
and perhaps that is what the real meaning of control,
to accept the truth about who we are and what is possible for us…
Kropotkin
finished two long ugly days, one more to go,
meanwhile I was at work thinking……
what about the people who don’t give a shit about
the Buddha or morality or bettering oneself?
what about Joe blow in Kansas? what does he care about
the stuff we are talking about here…….it doesn’t pay the bills,
it doesn’t give a thrill like watching TV or action movies or
playing video games…Joe Blow has
no idea what we are talking about and he doesn’t care…
what about those billions of people? what we are concerned about
the 99 percent of the human race just doesn’t care about…
I can rant about values and ism’s and justice or the metaphysical
or the questions of existence until I am blue in the face and it won’t change
a dam thing… as long we we have the NBA finals going on and american
football is coming soon and the latest video game like ace combat 7 is available
to play… why would people give a shit about the questions that I feel are
fundamental, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…
I would have better luck talking to a wall then trying to convince people
that these questions of existence have any value…
how to get people to look past the most basic level of existence that
people are living at right now? Most people are living as animals with couches,
with no interest in any question that might interfere with dinner…
I have notice something about California which is the remarkable
way people here are so into their own mind and their own
issues that they don’t even notice anyone else……….
People here live in their own minds so much, the outside world
counts for very little… how do we get people to look out again?
how do we get people to see that there is a world out here?
people are so self-involved that to notice the questions of existence
would require a massive change in people’s viewpoint…
IQ45 is just another example of someone who is so self-involved that
he thinks everyone on planet earth is simply staff for him………
and plenty of people here in California is the same way……
how to break that tunnel vision?
questions without answers… as usual…
Kropotkin